Heavy Friends
Saturday June 10th, 2023 with Heavy Ben
LOOP

Via deft handling of repetition, drone, and noise, Loop's album "Eternal (The Singles 1988)" is one of the most influential albums on my musical journey. On tonight's program, we wish a happy 58th birthday to Robert Hampson, born on this date in 1965 in London, England. We'll be doing a deep dive into the catalog of Loop, the band that Hampson formed at the age of 20 in 1985. Though Loop was around for only 5 years, their influence - especially on me personally - is huge. It served as my introduction to a particular lineage of rock that is psychedelic, spacey, noisy and repetitive. Loop were shoegaze before shoegaze. The vocals were buried behind distorted guitars, song structure was loose, with less emphasis on technical skill than exploring drones and sound itself. Alongside British contemporaries Spacemen 3, The Jesus And Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, Loop re-introduced a degree of experimentation back into rock music in the mid/late 1980s. Progressive rock had fallen out of fashion a decade earlier, as exemplified by The Sex Pistols' John Lydon adding the words "I HATE" on a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Punk rock, then new wave and synth pop, refreshingly stripped away the 1970s showy musicianship and exaggerated sense of importance. In a clever twist, Loop et al. continued the move away from pompous rock music, yet went back to the 1970s for inspiration. Perhaps not deliberately, they nonetheless cherry-picked the ultimate attributes (repetition, noise, experimentation, minimalism) from the leading bands (Can, Hawkwind, The Velvet Underground, Suicide, 13th Floor Elevators, Faust, The Stooges) and crafted these avant garde virtues into something resembling pop music. This was an obvious precursor to Swervedriver, Stereolab, Spiritualized, and much of the 1990s shoegaze and post-rock. Turns out it's okay to have guitars and play loud, without being a rock star or a guitar hero. It's easy to take this all for granted now. Innumerable bands in 2023 are playing noisy, droney, psychedelic, shoegazey, space rock, acknowledging Krautrock and avant garde influences. But in 1988, it was extremely rare. And so when I first heard tonight's leadoff track "Collision", I was hooked. I did not know the history, or appreciate the chance meeting for that record to end up in my hands, but it set off a lifetime of exploration. A big part of that exploration was bands that Loop played cover versions of: Suicide, Can, The Pop Group, Nick Drake, and even Neil Young. Young aside, you just did not hear that music being played in the 80s and 90s. Likewise, once you get a taste for drone and repetition, one's ears are prone to seduction by minimalism, Krautrock, Afrobeat, electronic dance music, dub reggae, and Hindustani classical music. After Loop split in 1990, singer and guitarist Robert Hampson and guitarist Scott Dawson released experimental ambient music as Main. Hampson also played with Godflesh, Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert, with Janek Schaefer as Comae, and recorded at the Paris-based musique concrète studio GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). Drummer John Willis and bassist Neil Mackay formed Hair & Skin Trading Co. Ironically, minus Loop's two guitar players, their first two albums sound more like Loop than Hampson's Main, before venturing into Faust-tapes like territory with their third album, 1995's "Psychedelische Musique (Lava Surf Kunst)". To everyone's surprise, Loop reformed in 2013 for live shows, released an EP in 2015, then an album in 2022 - 33 years after 1989's "A Gilded Eternity". Likewise, Hair & Skin Trading Company re-grouped for a full length album in 2020. Turn it up, bring the repetitive noise! (to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")